Palm Sunday - What do we expect of the Messiah?

Readings: Mark 11: 1-10; Isaiah 50: 4-7; Psalm 22: Philippians 2: 6-11; Mark 14:1-15:47

In the space of a few days, Jesus went from being hailed as a hero to being condemned as a criminal, and today’s Palm Sunday liturgy dramatically captures this change in the crowd’s perception of Jesus. To understand why there was such a radical change in the crowd’s perception, we can look to the passages in St Mark’s Gospel which describe Jesus’ final few days in Jerusalem.

The reason is to do with the kind of Messiah they were expecting. The crowd’s expectation was of a worldly Messiah, a Messiah who would rescue them from their Roman oppressors and reaffirm their identity as God’s holy people. But Jesus not only refused to lead a rebellion against the Roman authorities, but he challenged them on their very identity, which they were expecting Jesus to affirm. Jesus tells the Jews to pay their taxes to Caesar, he describes the chief priests, the scribes and the elders, in terms of vineyard tenants who are soon to be evicted, and he predicts the destruction of the temple. So given their expectations, Jesus was saying all the wrong things. Nevertheless, Jesus is still their Messiah. He is still the Saviour of his people. The problem was not with anything Jesus said: the problem was with the kind of Messiah the crowd expected, and how they believed the Messiah would save them.

This question of what kind of Messiah to expect is at the heart of Christianity. It is so easy for us to get caught up with the culture of our day, so that our hopes and aspirations become indistinguishable from the worldly hopes and aspirations of those around us. Or perhaps we are so disillusioned with the world that we seek to be free from the constraints we feel the world places on us. But if these are our ultimate expectations, if this is what we expect Jesus to do for us, then we are going to be sadly disappointed. If we try to make Jesus into what we want him to be, we’re going to fail, and the Cross is the sign of our failure.

But rather, we have to let Jesus make us into what he wants us to be, and the Cross is the sign of his power to transform us; his outstretched arms on the Cross show God’s healing love towards us. When his precious blood flowed from his side, the Holy Spirit flowed out into the world. We became able to participate in the inner life of the Trinity. By the grace that we receive through Christ’s Passion, our human nature is perfected and conformed to the divine nature.

It can be very painful letting go of our hope for comfort, security, and recognition by others, but what Jesus gives us is infinitely greater: through and in Jesus Christ it is humanly possible to know and love God.

Saturday of the fifth week of Lent - Risking everything

Readings: Ezekiel 37:21-28; Jeremiah 31: 10-13; John 11: 45-56

The Judaism of Jesus’ day was characterized by a yearning for restoration, a yearning for the fulfillment of promises made by God through prophets such as Ezekiel during the Babylonian exile. As we see in our first reading, Ezekiel looked forward to a day when God would unite His people under a new King David; he looked forward to a day when God would return His People to the land that He had given them where they would live in peace and justice; he looked forward to a time when God himself would place His own sanctuary among Israel and dwell with them forever. Yet it seemed to Jesus’ contemporaries that this promise had only partially been fulfilled. The Exiles had indeed returned to Jerusalem - but at the command of a Persian King, not a new David. By Jesus’ day the colonial power had changed, Judaea was ruled from Rome rather than Persia or Greece, but the basic situation was the same: Israel dwelt in the land, but the Kingdom had not been restored.

This left the religious authorities of Israel in the dangerous position of being people with something to lose. Whilst on the one hand the Jews were appalled by pagan Rome’s idolatry and resented Roman interference in their affairs, they were on the other hand granted certain privileges within the Empire to practice their religion. The temple was particularly important in this regard. Here heaven and earth met: Once a year, the High Priest would enter the Holy of Holies, the place where God dwelled, and act as a mediator for the people before God. Through sacrifice, the holiness of Israel as God’s chosen people seems to have been affirmed. It is possible that Israel understood their holiness as a kind of buffer between the profane world and God. The holiness of Israel was necessary if the world was to bear God’s presence. No man can look upon God and live. Israel, the holy nation dwelling in a holy land, protected the rest of the world from the destructive holiness of God.

Against this backdrop it is easy to see why Jesus made the Sanhedrin so nervous. It is easy to risk everything for the sake of the gospel if we have nothing in the first place. The Sanhedrin, however, from one perspective had everything to lose: they feared that the relative religious freedom they enjoyed and even the temple itself might be lost if the crowds following Jesus were interpreted by Rome as insurrection. They were well aware that the Roman response to rebellion was usually swift and brutal: the nation would be crushed by the legions and a new exile would follow. The signs that Jesus performed of the coming Kingdom, such as the raising of Lazarus just before this gospel, heightened their anxiety. They understood that by these signs many would be persuaded that Jesus was the Messiah, but their fear drove out faith. Instead of risking what they had in order to follow Christ, instead of rejoicing in his works as signs that God had visited his people and inaugurated a new age, they chose instead to do evil: ‘they planned to kill him’ so that ‘the whole nation may not perish’.

The mistake of the religious authorities was to rely on Roman law and their own ingenuity to preserve the nation rather than the power of God. In our psalm the prophet Jeremiah tells us: ‘The Lord will guard us, as a shepherd guards his flock’. It is wrong to do evil in order to protect what is good. It was wrong for the Jewish authorities to plot the death of an innocent man in order to protect a nation. It is wrong for us today to do evil in order to protect the Church. We must always do what is right, and trust that the God who raised Jesus from the dead will take care of us and all those that we love.

Stations of the Cross 2012: Jesus meets the women of Jerusalem

Br. Andrew Brookes offers a reflection on the Eighth Station of the Cross, which will be delivered in the priory church this evening and which has been specially pre-recorded for Godzdogz:

 

Thursday of the Fifth Week of Lent - Revealed in Hiddenness

Readings: Genesis 17:3-9, Psalm 105, John 8:51-9. 

The readings during Passiontide remind us of the ways in which Christ – the faithful Jew – fulfils the law and prophecy of the Hebrew bible and, by His Paschal suffering, cuts a new covenant, offering healing and salvation to all.

In today’s gospel, the Pharisees ask of Christ the crucial question – who is He? Who is this man who claims to offer everlasting life and to have seen Abraham? What is Jesus claiming about Himself? Ironically, the sneering tone of their question presumes that He cannot be greater than Abraham, but His response manifests the heart of the Christian message of Good News: “before ever Abraham was, I AM.” With these words, Christ reveals that he does not simply come after the Old Testament as its fulfilment, but he stands before it and works through it: Christ, as the eternal Son of the Father, exists before the creation of the world, and it is as preparation for Jesus Christ and for His work of redemption that God calls Abraham and establishes the Jewish nation.

‘I am’ – a seemingly innocuous phrase, but one that John gives a curious priority, placing it upon the lips of Christ forty-five times in his gospel, most notably as Jesus claims to be the bread of life (6:35), the light of the world (8:12), the gate of salvation (10:9), the Good Shepherd (10:11), the resurrection and the life (11:25), the way, the truth and the life (14:6), and the true vine (15:1). To Jewish ears, this phrase – ‘I am’ - is straightforwardly a divine title: it is the ineffable and mysterious divine name, יהוה, the term used by God to refer to Himself, revealed by God to Moses in the burning bush (Exodus 3:14), and considered by the Jewish people too holy to be spoken aloud.

And so in His response to the Pharisees, Christ appropriates this name for Himself: He identifies Himself with the most-high God, the one who – as God - depends upon no other for his existence, and gives being to all things. Christ’s divinity, therefore, is not merely ‘functional’ but real: Christ not only does ‘divine things’ – bringing healing to all who gaze upon Him as the Serpent in the desert (Numbers 21:4-9) – but is actually the true God, present in human flesh, working by His own power.

The Pharisees clearly understand Christ’s claim: this is why they try to stone Him, and why Christ is forced to hide and escape. It is Christ’s claim to be God that offends them, and which continues to offend many to this day, as a seemingly blasphemous and unthinkable doctrine. Yet whilst Christ is forced to hide His body from the Pharisees, the truth about Himself has been hidden all along, because the Pharisees did not see with the eyes of faith.

During these final days of the season of Lent, through prayer and penance, we are turning to the Lord, asking him to purify our eyes of faith that we may more and more see the divine presence in the world, and particularly that we might see the ways in which Christ is present to us, that we may dare to believe the words He speaks about Himself: “before ever Abraham was, I AM”.

Wednesday of the Fifth Week of Lent - Bringing everything into focus

Readings: Daniel 3: 14-20, 91-92, 95; Daniel 3: 52-56; John 8: 31-42


Just because we are called Christians, that doesn’t mean we’re perfect at it (clearly) and it doesn’t even mean we know exactly what being a Christian really means or will really involve. So much of our approach to the world and the circumstances of our life is shaped by the culture in which we grew up, a culture which, while containing some Christian elements, could certainly no longer be called Christian. And indeed, even if it were, that would be no guarantee that we would see everything exactly as we should.

In respect of this, we should pay attention to who it is Jesus is speaking to in today’s Gospel: judging from his tone, we might fail to notice that he is talking to ‘the Jews who had believed in him’ (Jn 8: 31). First of all they are Jews, members of that people who had been specially prepared to receive the Messiah, and whose culture and upbringing we might therefore expect to dispose them to see things in the right perspective. Besides that, though, we are told that they had already believed in Jesus: they have a personal commitment to his teaching too.

Even so, they don’t get what Jesus has to say: in fact, their understanding of their membership of the chosen people confuses them, making it difficult for them to grasp that they are nevertheless enslaved to sin and need to be released.

This encounter of Jesus’ is relevant to us today too: we must always beware of our attitudes and prejudices, and ask ourselves whether we really approach the world and our engagement with it in a Christian way. As we prepare in these final weeks of Lent to commemorate our Lord’s Passion, the Church guides us to see that, ultimately, it is only in relation to the Cross that everything else comes into its proper focus.

Tuesday of the Fifth Week of Lent - The Son of Man Will Be Lifted Up

Readings: Numbers 21: 4-9; Psalm 102; John 8: 21-30

We read in today’s Gospel passage of an impasse of sorts. Simply put the Pharisees cannot understand Jesus; the Pharisees are of this world and Jesus is not, and we read that those who cling to this world will perish in their sins. By this world, John does not aim to denigrate creation, but uses the term to denote all that is contrary to God, all that opposes God in the world. The answer then is to believe in Him and break the stranglehold of this world, the death that comes from sin. To believe, ἐγώ εἰμι, that I am he, is to believe in the Son and in the Father. Christ offers this opportunity for belief to the stubborn Pharisees who are blinded by this world, but to us he offers the further insight of his death and resurrection. To believe in him is to accept the divine relation of the Father and the Son and, when combined with the lifting up of the Son of Man, it is to accept that it is this lifting up that is to be the cause of this insight. We find the Greek verb ὕψωσεν for ‘lifted up’ and note that this verb can be seen to have more than one meaning. On the one hand, it may denote a physical lifting up but alternatively a metaphorical uplifting. John’s use of this verb in his gospel is highly interesting for its double meaning; When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am [he].

John’s theology is seen here at its most distinctive and enigmatic. We are pointed to see that in the very act of the lifting up of Christ on the cross Jesus is, as the Son of Man, lifted toward his heavenly glory. It is in this moment of seeming failure and ignominy that Christ is exalted and raised on high. It is in this moment when the world passes judgement on him, that Christ becomes the Judge. We see in this foreshadowing of ‘the hour’ the means by which the breach between heaven and earth will be bridged for all time by Christ as Victor and Judge, as it was foretold in the scriptures. The recognition of the true identity of Christ is precisely what is being presented in this passage as necessary for the liberation of all humanity from sin and death.

Consequently, the content of the ‘lifting up’ cannot just be the Son’s crucifixion but must include the resurrection and lifting up to heaven. The death of Jesus, foretold in this passage, is also seen as his vindication, and by extension, the lifting up forms the basis for the Church on earth, which in turn will share in the divine community of believers, which is realised in this action. The denigration of Christ is his vindication, so that all might be saved. The lifting up of the Son of Man, that focal point of salvific faith, accords with the bronze serpent in the desert. Everyone who looks to the uplifted Christ, and recognises his identity in true belief, will have eternal life. As we near Holy Week, let us try not to be blinkered as the Pharisees; let us recognise the Son of Man for who he really is, and recognise in his lifting up, the means by which we will be lifted up to share in his heavenly glory.

The Solemnity of the Annunciation: "Fiat Voluntas Tua"

Readings: Isaiah 7:10-14; 8:10; Psalm 40; Hebrews 10:4-10; Luke 1:26-38

Recently, one of our brothers gave us a rather exceptionally fine joke. He asked: “Why did Mary, Joseph and Jesus go to Egypt on a donkey?” As we did not even know the means of transport of Our Lord when he fled to Egypt (Mt 2:13-15), we just whispered: “We don’t know!” And the brother responded: “Because Mary had already given her Fiat!”

The Solemnity of the Annunciation comes nine months before Christmas, the birth of Our Lord. Mary conceived Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit. The Catechism of the Catholic Church – in paragraph 484 – tells us that ‘[t]he Annunciation to Mary inaugurates "the fullness of time", the time of the fulfillment of God's promises and preparations.’ And when the answer came about how it would be possible to conceive without a man, Mary said: “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word.” That is known as the Fiat. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, in its paragraph 973, tells us that ‘by pronouncing her “fiat” at the Annunciation and giving her consent to the Incarnation, Mary was already collaborating with the whole work her Son was to accomplish.” Mary, as an active instrument of God, by her fiat,became the Theotokos, the “Mother of God.”

Yet questions remain: why did God chose a young woman already engaged to a man? If Mary had been chosen and prepared from the beginning, where are the merits in her “fiat”? In other words: what is the place of the Annunciation in relation to the Immaculate Conception? To the first question, the most understandable answer would be that God’s plans are different from our plans and they always go beyond what we might expect, for our good. God, by choosing Mary to carry the Son of God, chose at the same time Joseph to be the faithful guardian of Jesus. Mary and Joseph both accepted God’s plans because they put God’s plans of salvation before their own temporal happiness. They completely dedicated their lives to their vocation. To the second question; Mary, who had been chosen and prepared before, still needed to accept the plan of God. Adam and Eve had been in a similar situation but chose to disobey. Mary’s fiat was still needed for the plan of God to be fulfilled. In fact, the early Fathers gladly assert . . .: "The knot of Eve's disobedience was untied by Mary's obedience: what the virgin Eve bound through her disbelief, Mary loosened by her faith.” Comparing her with Eve, they call Mary "the Mother of the living" and frequently claim: "Death through Eve, life through Mary.’ (CCC 494).

In the Joyful Mysteries, the first is “the Annunciation”. The Annunciation is a joyful event indeed. Our salvation was made possible and we got an answer to our many queries about God’s will for us. Mary taught us to obey the will of God and take seriously our vocations, even when they seem challenging and impossible. An act of humility and total obedience to the Will of God always plays a major role in the growth of the Kingdom of God. Mary’s fiat is our light in moments of doubt and confusion.

Compline for Sundays III-VI in Lent

Compline for Sundays III-VI in Lent from godzdogz on Vimeo.

Last week, we uploaded an audio recording of Compline for Sundays III-VI in Lent.

Now, we are pleased to offer the full text in this video, so that you can follow and pray this beautiful Night Office with us over the last Sundays in Lent.

It's the perfect way to end the old week and start the new.

Fifth Sunday of Lent – The Law written in our hearts

Readings: Jeremiah 31:31-34; Psalm 51; Hebews 5:7-9; John 12:20-33

The days are coming, says Jeremiah, when there will be no need to teach friends and relatives how to know the Lord. All, from least to greatest, the prophet promises, shall know me. We will have the law written in our hearts, the knowledge of God will be within us.

If this is true, and those days have become reality by the salvation in Christ, why then have we got this book that I’m holding in my hand in this very moment? I am talking about the English version of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. It has 2865 paragraphs spread over 691 pages. It weighs 1.1 kilograms. It’s quite a brick! And this doesn’t convince me at all that the Church believes that I’ve got all I need for my faith within myself. Can’t we just be like certain charismatic, evangelical groups? They stick with the Bible and that’s it. The rest that they need, they get through common worship and inner prayer. Why do we need all this extra teaching?

To approach this dilemma, let’s start with a reflection on the nature of Revelation. The historical Jesus fulfilled his mission two thousand years ago. By his sacrifice, he opened the way to salvation, giving humanity access to eternal life and intimate friendship with God. Still, we are left with a tension. On one hand, we have become one with Christ through our baptism and through our faith. On the other hand, we still need to walk the way of perfection. That way may sometimes seem awfully long. We carry Christ in our hearts, and at the same time, we are longing for Him. We live in what we may call an eschatological tension between Christ within us here and now, and yet not fully there.

We are called to follow a way of faith that in medieval times often was called Imitatio Christi, the imitation of Christ. We are called to become perfect human beings just as Jesus is perfect. In Christ, we are called to know God perfectly. Therefore, as we become one with Christ through baptism and faith, we also begin a journey towards Christ. The pilgrims of earlier times were aware of this double dimension. They knew that no person would start out on a journey to a holy shrine without already carrying Christ within themselves. Paul puts this in his own way as he states about himself: ‘forgetting all that lies behind me, and straining forward to what lies in front, I am racing towards the finishing-point to win the prize of God's heavenly call in Christ Jesus’ (Philippians 3:13-14).

We are able to begin a journey towards Christ because we are already with Him. This voyage goes through all dimensions of the human existence. It goes through the joyful, worshipping fellowship of the disciples. But it also goes through our fears and all the threatening and deadly areas of our lives, areas we might try to avoid. And ultimately, it goes towards the Christ exalted on the cross. It is not an easy road to walk, and we would never be able to walk it if we weren’t nourished by Christ himself through his word and through the Eucharist, and strengthen by the Holy Spirit.

We asked in the introductory question, why do we need the Catechism if we already carry Christ in our hearts? Well, we may answer this with another question: Why do we need the Eucharist if we’re already baptised? Both questions lead us to a matter of growth. The Christian life is a way towards holiness in which we progressively conform ourselves to our Lord. On this way, we seek to deepen our faith in all its dimensions; spiritually, intellectually, in true humanity and in charity. We may conclude then, that faith demands of us a commitment, according to each person’s capacity, in all areas of our lives. In this ongoing formation, our catechism fulfils an important need. The catechism itself explains for us in its own prologue its role and function:

‘Catechesis is an education in the faith of children, young people and adults which includes especially the teaching of Christian doctrine imparted, generally speaking, in an organic and systematic way, with a view to initiating the hearers into the fullness of Christian life’ (§8)

Let us then use such catechesis for our education of faith, and so grow ever deepen in knowledge of God and his law which is already written in our hearts.

Saturday of the Fourth Week of Lent: A lesson from the Pharisees

Jer 11:18-20; Ps 7:2-3, 9bc-10, 11-12; Jn 7:40-53

If you've ever thought our society was going through a cultural and religious identity crisis, things were no different 2000 years ago. This was of great concern to the Pharisees – How does one live as a faithful Jew in a land that is occupied by Roman pagans? This seems like a perfectly legitimate question to ask in our own time – What does it mean to be a faithful Christian in a largely secular society?

The problem with the Pharisees is not so much this question, but the answer they give. They believed that Israel must separate itself from all Gentile impurity and defilement, because they thought this was the only way God would rescue His people from the clutches of Rome. So we hear the Pharisees in today's gospel saying 'This crowd, who do not know the law, are accursed.' The Pharisees were for separation, for casting people out who didn't fit in with what they thought it meant to be a faithful Jew. And this is a great temptation for us today. Many of us are too ready to accuse others of not being true Christians because they don't see things exactly the same way we see them. But whatever a Christian believes, they cannot undo their baptism. It is because a baptised person always remains a true Christian that division in the Church is such a serious issue. So rather than writing off those Christians who disagree with us, we should be willing to engage in deep and serious discussion which is rooted in love for them and for God. After all, they are our brothers and sisters in Christ.

Stations of the Cross 2012: Jesus is stripped of his garments

Br. Matthew Jarvis offers a reflection on the Tenth Station of the Cross, which will be delivered in the priory church this evening and which has been specially pre-recorded for Godzdogz:

Thursday of the Fourth Week of Lent: A fit of giggles

Readings: Exodus 32:7-14; Psalm 106:19-20, 21-22, 23; John 5:31-47

When I was young, if ever my parents accused me or my siblings of some trivial misdeed at home, I had enormous difficulty protesting my innocence. Of course, I was a perfectly sweet and blameless child – give or take a few practical jokes now and then. But in the concrete circumstances where I knew I was innocent, I would find the accusation so ludicrous that I would collapse in a fit of giggles! While this rendered me physically incapable of uttering a coherent sentence in my defence, my parents would simply suspect me all the more…

And why exactly did I find these situations so funny? I think, on reflection, it has something to do with the nature of testimony. If my mother wanted to know which naughty boy had put the sugar in the salt cellar, it may come down to a stark contest between my word and my brother’s – one versus one – unless another sibling gave their testimony on either side. If my siblings, for a laugh, all accused me (the innocent one), how on earth could I disprove their case? There was nothing to be done but laugh at the absurdity.

Fortunately, in today’s gospel, Jesus doesn’t giggle in the face of his accusers. For a start, the accusations (of healing a man on the Sabbath and calling God his Father) are very serious – and also true. The Jewish leaders are trying to have him killed. So Jesus is perfectly calm, composed, and rational. He tries teaching them about his intimate relationship with God the Father, who sent him into this world to bring it to new life (Jn. 5:21).

Christians know, by faith, that Jesus is the Truth. So, for us, his testimony comes with an automatic guarantee. ‘Truth himself speaks truly, or there’s nothing true’ – as St Thomas Aquinas puts it in his famous hymn.

But what about those who don’t – or don’t want to – accept the testimony of Jesus? Aren’t there many people who struggle to believe? Many who want to make up their minds about Jesus based on the evidence? Yes, many people find themselves doubting Jesus, and in this gospel he takes them seriously. He knows that Jewish law required at least two witnesses in court: ‘If I testify about myself, my testimony is not valid.’ So he appeals to three others: God the Father, John the Baptist, and Moses. The Father’s testimony, however, though visible in the very words and deeds of Jesus, does not penetrate to Jesus’ accusers. Tragically, their hearts are closed to the love of God (Jn. 5:41). And while John the Baptist, by signs and preaching, also pointed to Jesus, they did not fully believe him and have since turned away from his testimony (Jn. 5:35). So Jesus appeals to Moses in the Scriptures – the highest authority his accusers will recognise.

What about us? We can study the Scriptures, reading the words of both Moses and John the Baptist, and that would be an excellent start. But this is not enough. After all, the highest authority is God the Father, from Whom all Jesus’ authority comes. If we want to recognise the Truth, we must accept that highest authority of all by opening our hearts to receive the love of God. To be honest, none of us is sweet and blameless, so giggling won’t help. But the love of God is so purifying and transformative that we’ll end up rejoicing anyway.

Wednesday of the fourth week of Lent: The Unity of Justice and Mercy, of Judgment and Salvation, in Jesus.

Isaiah 49:8-15; Ps 145:8-9, 13-14, 17-18; Jn 5:17-30.

A lot of ideas are combined in today’s gospel: ideas about life, resurrection, the relationship of the Father and the Son, but most strikingly they are all woven into the theme of judgement. How are we to make sense of it all? Further, there is the challenge, perhaps the puzzle, of how we are to relate it to the first reading from Isaiah which seems to be about mercy and consolation. Are the judgement of God and the mercy of God at odds with each other? It is also noteworthy that in today’s liturgy it is the Old Testament reading that stresses God in a relationship of mercy to us, while the New Testament one stresses the role of God as judge.

I think it may be helpful for us to start by taking seriously just how central is the Justice of God to the Bible, and how integral to the faith perspective of the Jews and Christians was the conviction that God is not only just but is the judge of all humanity and history.

Only God is the real judge, who judges all with fairness. Thus when Jesus talks of being a judge and receiving the role of judge from God (the Father) he is claiming a divine role (Jn 5:21-22). He filled out this claim, making clear he draws life from the Father, but equally has life in himself and is a person acting with divine authority if one he has received (eternally). It is this that gives him his credentials to be the judge of humanity. Even if the Jews of his day saw only a man, he was, and is, in reality the Word-made-flesh. Since he lived in complete obedience to the Father, he models perfect justice and can judge, in his humanity, with perfect justice and integrity (5:30).

In Biblical usage, judgement has various linked connotations but different verbal usages. It means judgement as assessment; but also (in the light of this) judgement as condemnation and punishment. If the former is the focus, all people are judged fairly and rewarded or punished; if the latter is the focus, those not condemned, can be said not to have been judged. No one should take the prospect of God’s judgment lightly. At one level all have fallen short of what God wants and so we all stand condemned. However, on occasions the just or oppressed look to God humbly to judge and find in their favour. Thus at another level judgement is linked with the bringing of salvation as well as condemnation. Biblical texts like our gospel today work subtly with a number of these usages.

God is the author of life and living rightly leads to a share in life, especially eternal life, while living badly and rejecting God leads to death. Judgement, which draws out the consequences of our free acts for good or evil, for or against God, thus offers the reward of life or the punishment of death. It is as stark as that. Given our sinfulness our prospects are bleak – or they would be if the mercy of God did not enter in.

For the Jews, mercy is a relationship of compassionate loyalty. It is this that lies behind the great promises and assurance in the passage from Isaiah. This merciful relationship is at the heart of the covenant, and it is a stronger relationship even than that of a mother and child (Isa 49:14-15). But it does not remove the requirement for justice or the fact of judgement by God. Rather God will pour out his grace upon us, forgiving us and also renewing us and strengthening us so that we produce works that please God, works done in grace that God will judge to be worthy of reward. It is this transforming grace that, with our co-operation, is the joy and consolation that Isaiah writes about so eloquently. God’s mercy, with our co-operation, makes us just, it does not put aside justice. It means our lives will spring forth with just works (cf Isa 49:10) and in this grace we will walk in paths of uprightness (Isa 49:11-12), able to stand with and before God. If God’s justice stresses our accountability to God, then God’s mercy stresses the undeserved divine help given to us as creatures. Both features, not one or the other, are irreducibly part of God’s relationship with us.

All this, I suggest, is behind today’s passage from John. Jesus, sent by the Father, is the divine judge but he is God who brings us life and mercy too. Jesus lived the perfectly just life as a human, a standard by which we all stand condemned. But the incarnation also establishes a bond of mercy between God and humanity. As well as forgiveness, it means that the very life of God, in the Spirit of God, is poured into us. Through this we too, in and through God, can live justly. We receive the mercy of God so as to fulfil the requirements of God’s justice and receive its reward.

To properly honour Jesus (Jn 5:23), to listen and to believe in Jesus (Jn 5:24) is to accept this full salvation which Jesus brings, in which mercy and justice work together. Through the judgement of Jesus upon us now, received by accepting the truth of his gospel, we can receive his life now (Jn 5:24) and eternally (Jn 5:21 & 25). In this way we need not be condemned, now or eternally, due to the sin and evil which results from our attempts to live according to our own agenda, ignoring God’s justice, and in our own strength, ignoring God’s merciful help (Jn 5:29). There is no third option in the final analysis.

Choose life, then, not death! Accept mercy and so live justly! Choose Jesus now!

Studentate meeting

Tuesday of the Fourth Week of Lent - Do Not Wait for Healing; Ask Now

Reading 1 Ez 47:1-9, 12 / Responsorial Psalm Ps 46:2-3, 5-6, 8-9 / Gospel Jn 5:1-16

Sometimes Jesus uses a person’s illness to demonstrate God’s mercy and healing power. In the case of the blind man in chapter 9 of John’s Gospel, Jesus informs his disciples that some illnesses are not connected to sin at all. Another person’s illness can challenge us to show compassion and deepen the pure love God has shared with us by sharing it with someone in need.

While the above example teaches us an important lesson about God’s healing power, we often overstate this episode, disconnecting all sinfulness from all illness. However, in chapter 5 of the same Gospel, which we hear today, Jesus clearly tells the man whom he heals after 38 years of illness, “See, you have been made well! Do not sin any more, so that nothing worse happens to you.”

At first it sounds as though Jesus is threatening the man. “Do not sin, and God will not smite you!” But drawing that conclusion misses the point of his warning. God does not inflict illness on someone as a response to his sin. Jesus provides a clear reminder that sinfulness leads to self-inflicted illness. This man is not sick because of some external cause. He has marred himself with his sinfulness. He shows his sinfulness on the outside for all of us to see. And his external healing reflects the healing of his soul.

It can be easy to ridicule this man, or even disbelieve his waiting 38 years for healing. He is blind, lame, and crippled. Why would he sit in this debilitating condition for so long? And why would no one else come to his aid?

But what are we to say for those of us who, as a result of our sin, are only ill on the inside? I may not be able to ignore physical blindness, but with enough discipline I can ignore the anger I have for another person. If greed moves me to steal from others, I can learn to cover my shame with the gratification of so many material goods. And if I am really good at covering over this sin, no one else has to know there is anything wrong with me...or so I convince myself to think.

The problem is that no sinfulness, no matter how minimal, can stay in our hearts long without doing severe damage. Regardless of our sins’ species and gravity, they eventually smother the warmth of the Holy Spirit within us. We either diminish the level of charity in our souls or expel it altogether. And since charity is the sign by which people know we are Christians, our sinfulness will show forth on the outside, just as it did with the man in the today’s Gospel.

The ill man could not have been cured before the appointed time. Jesus was not in his midst until that day. But, Jesus is among us now. He brings healing in the Sacrament of Penance and sustains our good health through the Eucharist. We do not have to wait for Easter to experience the Risen Christ. If you are ill now, call upon Jesus today, “Heal me.”

19th March - St Joseph

Readings: 2 Samuel 7: 4-5, 12-14, 16; Psalm 88; Romans 4: 13, 16-18, 22; Matthew 1: 16, 18-21, 24

St Joseph, it seems, was not a man to make a fuss: as we hear in the Gospel for today’s feast, when he first discovered that Mary was pregnant, he ‘resolved to send her away quietly’ for, as St Matthew tells us, he was ‘a just man and unwilling to put her to shame’ (Mt 1: 19). Again, after the angel has given him the true explanation of Mary’s pregnancy, there is no fuss. His response is very straightforward: ‘when Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him’ (Mt 1: 24).

Perhaps it is therefore unsurprising, and indeed appropriate, that he should disappear from the scene so soon: his last appearance in the Gospel narratives is in St Luke’s account of the finding of the boy Jesus in the temple (Lk 2: 41-52), after which he simply disappears. This situation we find in Scripture was reflected in the life and worship of the early Church, which spoke, of course, about Jesus, and increasingly about his Mother, but gave little liturgical prominence to St Joseph (this feast day was only adopted throughout the Latin Church in 1479).

Clearly we do want to speak first of all about the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the great mystery of our salvation which we prepare to commemorate in this Lenten season; we do rightly single out Our Lady for special veneration because of the unique role she played in the working-out of that salvation, and the unique privileges with which she was endowed in the light of that role. But in the growing prominence given by the Church to St Joseph over the centuries, we see a recognition of the fact that his response to the circumstances in which he found himself can be an example to us: of course, the ways in which Christ comes into our lives will be rather different, but St Joseph’s response to the news he receives about Jesus – the simple, trusting acceptance of God’s message as something which transforms the shape and purpose of his life, even as he remains a carpenter in Nazareth – is a witness to us of that ‘righteousness of faith’ through which, by God’s gracious gift, he promised that Abraham and his descendants should inherit the world (Rom 4: 13).

Compline - III-VI Sundays of Lent

The Dominican student brothers in Oxford have recorded Compline for the Sundays in Lent. 

We hope to create a video with the texts so that you can pray Compline with us over the remaining Sundays of Lent. For now, here is the audio recording alone. 

For a good insight into the special Dominican chants used here ('Media Vita' and 'O Rex'), see this video by our brothers in the Province of St Joseph (USA).

Fourth Sunday of Lent - The Challenge of the Cross

Readings: 2 Chronicles 36:14-16.19-23; Psalm 136; Eph. 2:4-10; Jn 3:14-21

One of the more alarming aspects of being human is that often we are not very good at it. For G.K. Chesterton, this is what makes the doctrine of original sin so eminently plausible. We might, he says in the The Religious Doubts of Democracy (1903), try to dissuade our friend from swallowing his tenth whiskey by slapping him on the back and encouraging him to “be a man”. No one, however, attempts to dissuade a crocodile from swallowing its tenth explorer by slapping it on the back and exclaiming, “come on, be a crocodile”. The reason, of course, is that the crocodile is a predator. We expect crocodiles to hunt and to kill for food. Our notion of what it means to be a good crocodile includes the possibility of explorers being eaten in certain circumstances. We attach no blame to the crocodile if it behaves in this manner. In contrast, human beings can choose to behave in ways that are beneath them. We say that certain actions are ‘inhuman’. We can choose to live a diminished kind of human life, indeed, this is exactly what happens when we choose evil. Christianity, in Christ, gives us the model of a full, complete, a perfect human life. To sin, then, is deliberately reject this fullness of humanity in favour of a diminished or truncated human life. To sin is to reject what you are, it is to choose a less ambitious, an incomplete definition of human life and being.

For Chesterton, the acceptance of truncated and incomplete visions of human nature by a community inevitably has disastrous consequences. In our first reading from the second book of Chronicles, for example, we see the people of Judah attempting to go it alone. They abandoned the law and the ‘boundary markers’ that distinguished them as the chosen people of God. They desecrated the temple, the place where God dwelled. They ignored the words of the prophets and attempted to free themselves from Babylonian influence by military means. The fruit of this attempt to blaze their own trail and construct their own definition of human life and being instead of the one given by God in the law, the consequence of this flight from their own humanity was violence, destruction, and exile. The temple was destroyed, Israel lost its inheritance as children of God and was enslaved. Like all sin, their rebellion concluded in a degradation of their dignity as human persons.

This exile, the loss of the Promised Land, is yet another repeat of a theme that recurs throughout the Old Testament. It is yet another fall from grace, a repetition of the sin of Adam and Eve that obliged them to leave Eden, a repetition of the tower of Babel that led to the scattering and division of the human race, a repeat of the grumblings of the desert and their associated wanderings for forty years. All these ‘falls from grace’, all these ‘original sins’ are summed up, and in an important sense given a depth of meaning, by the crucifixion. The cross of Christ is not only a revelation of God’s love, it is also a revelation of the reality of sin, it is a revelation of the consequences of sin and the true state of humanity. Human nature is on the cross because human beings reject God’s offer of friendship and love. Human nature is suffering because human beings have not dared to be what God intended us to be. Human nature is tortured because human beings have not dared to accept, or to accept fully, the gift of divine life in Christ.

Yet this is not the whole story. When we look again at the ‘falls from grace’, the ‘original sins’ of the Old Testament, we find that God responds to the infidelity of his people with an act of creation. Time after time we see God acting to restore His relationship with his people; God acts to overcome the ruptures, the damage, of sin. For example, our first reading concludes with a command from Cyrus, King of Persia, that the Jews return to the Promised Land, and that their Temple be rebuilt. Israel did not earn its return from exile, this was a gift from God, and his chosen instrument for offering this gift was a pagan King. We see another example In chapter 21 of the book of Numbers: here God punishes the grumbling of his people by sending fiery serpents among them, but even while he punishes, God offers a cure. The Israelites survive the deadly bite of the fiery serpents by gazing at a bronze serpent held aloft by Moses. Healing comes to Israel when it gazes upon and acknowledges the true consequences of its sin. The sign of Israel’s infidelity becomes the sign of its healing.

It is this incident with the bronze serpent that Jesus alludes to in today’s gospel. Jesus tells us ‘Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life’ (John 3: 14). Christ was ‘lifted up’ for all to see on the cross. Christ becomes the sign of humanity’s rejection of its own nature and vocation. Christ becomes the sign of humanity’s rejection of God himself. This is why the cross sums up and adds meaning to all our falls from grace. It gathers to itself all of our sin, we might even go so far as to say that the crucifixion of Christ is the form of all sin. Yet Jesus was also lifted up at the Resurrection and the Ascension. When we accept the cross, when we accept what the cross communicates, when we accept both the reality of our sin and the love of God, then we are also raised up to new life with Christ. By God’s grace we become a new creation, restored to friendship with God and raised up to share in the eternal and infinite love of the Trinity.

The cross is, then, to borrow an idea from Timothy McDermott, a ‘bifurcation’ in human history. At Calvary God confronts Man with the truth: the truth of his love, and the true meaning of our sin. The cross obliges us to choose: we can either accept the distorted vision of humanity that underpins sin and darkness, the crucified humanity that is the fruit of our rejection of God; or we can accept fullness of life in Christ by becoming united with Christ, by sharing his death so we can rise with Him at the Resurrection. Today’s gospel suggests that the basis of our choice will be our willingness to accept the truth. Christ tells us ‘whoever lives the truth will come to the light’. If we recognize the evil in our lives for what it really is: sin, then we will also see that this truth brings with it the possibility of forgiveness. As the first letter of St John puts it, if we confess our sins, he will forgive us our sins and lead us to all righteousness’ (1 John 1: 9). On the other hand, St. John also tells that ‘if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us’ (I John 1:8). We cannot be healed unless we acknowledge our need for healing. We cannot be forgiven unless we acknowledge that we need forgiveness.

St Patrick

Readings: 1 Peter 4:7-11; Psalm 96:1- 10; Luke 5:1-11

Of all patron saints, perhaps St Patrick is the most emblematic. Today is the one day of the year in which we celebrate all things Irish. The fact we do this on the feast day of a Catholic saint is a reminder of the great influence Catholicism has had on the Irish identity. But also St Patrick's day is an opportunity to remember the influence the Irish identity has had on Catholicism. St Patrick's missionary spirit continued for centuries after his death and has left an indelible mark on the Church throughout the world. It was Irish missionaries who popularized the penitential practice of private confession. Celtic monks were instrumental in spreading the Gospel in Western Europe and laying the foundations of medieval monastic culture. From the 16th Century, the Catholic Church in Ireland suffered terrible persecution, but generation after generation held firm to the Faith and so lead the way to a Catholic revival in the 19th Century. As the Irish people have spread throughout the world, they have taken their faith with them. The fact that my family is Catholic is because my great great grandfather fell in love with an Irish lass for Cork.

The difficulties the Catholic Church in Ireland faces today shouldn't make us forget the great debt we owe to St Patrick. The account of his call to evangelise the Irish should give us hope for the future:

I was in Britain with my family. And there I saw in a vision of the night, a man coming as it were from Ireland, with countless letters, and he gave me one of them, and I read the beginning of the letters, which ran “the voice of the Irish”; and as I was reading the beginning of the letter aloud I thought I heard at that very moment the voice of those who lived beside the wood of Voclut, which is near the Western sea, and thus they cried out as with one voice: “we beg you, holy youth, to come and walk once more among us”.

With the knowledge of St Patrick's willingness to respond to this call and of the deep love the Irish have for him, we can trust that through the prayers of St Patrick, God will continue to call Holy people to preach the Gospel to the people of Ireland.

Stations of the Cross 2012: Jesus Meets His Mother

Br Augustine DeArmond offers a reflection on the Fourth Station of the Cross, which will be delivered in the priory church this evening and which has been specially pre-recorded for Godzdogz:

Thursday of the Third Week of Lent - Reading the Signs

Readings: Jeremiah 7:23-8, Psalm 95, Luke 11:14-23.


Hindsight is a wonderful thing! How often we use this phrase to admit our blindness to the people and events that have shaped our lives. Sometimes missing or misreading such events causes us the loss of something we can never fully reclaim; ‘If only I had been able to see at the time! If only I had noticed!’ At other times it seems that we are shaped by events regardless of our appreciation of them; ‘well, looking back, it seems to all fit into place now.’

There can be many reasons for our blindness, from being ‘too busy to see’ to outright prejudice, and we learn from today’s Gospel that little has changed. Jesus is among the people, and drives out from one of them a demon, restoring the victim’s speech. It is not an everyday occurrence admittedly, and the crowds are ‘amazed’. One would think that upon seeing such a powerful sign all scepticism and disbelief in Jesus would vanish, but far from it. As soon as the demon is driven out, the crowds begin to mutter; "By the power of Beelzebul, the prince of demons, he drives out demons." Others ask for yet another sign: just to make sure, you understand…

This blindness, and the testing of Jesus, might well seem to us counter-intuitive – ah, the benefit of hindsight. But can we really blame these people for their stance when we commit the same folly today? Jesus seeks to reassure them and point out the error in their reasoning. Would one from the devil really seek to cast out the devil? If the Jewish exorcists claim to work by God’s power, why should they doubt Jesus’ ability to do the same? Jesus is patient in his teaching but the lines are being drawn; some are beginning to see the work of Jesus for what it really is, the work of God as Man among them, but others are blinded by prejudice and arrogance. ‘Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.’

So, is this blindness from which we suffer, insurmountable? Well, we must remember that God asks nothing from us of which we are not capable. He knows our weakness and our folly. We, however, must do our best to see with the eyes of faith. We must learn that if we are to find our ultimate end and purpose in Christ, we must be alert to the signs around us. We must be attentive to the Word of God as it is mediated to us; through the events and people around us. We must not be blinded by our worldly affairs and concerns, or by hardheartedness and prejudice. The season of Lent is an apt time to take stock of our situation in life; to try to see with the eyes of faith and discern God’s presence and his call among all the varied people and events of our lives. If we do this, then by his grace, he will drive out the demons and restore us to himself.

Wednesday of the Third Week of Lent - Humble role models in the Kingdom of God

Readings: Deuteronomy 4:1, 5-9; Psalm 147:12-13, 15-16, 19-20; Matthew5:17-19.

Matthew 5:17-19 is the beginning of the “expounding of the Law” in the Sermon on the Mount. The “adherence to the Law”, meaning here the Mosaic Law, was a heated debate in the first years of Christianity. Some Christians wanted to ignore the Mosaic Law, saying that Jesus Christ changed the Law; some others wanted to stick to that law and suggested that the Gentiles were to be required to do the same. Obviously, the Jews could not just move on without taking with them all those laws that they believed were from God and meaningful to them. Saint Matthew, who wrote his gospel for a Jewish community, needed to give the view of Jesus towards the Mosaic Law. While Jesus might have appeared to be a revolutionary who came to abolish the “old law” in favour of his new commandment, he still could be seen as the one who came to explain the law and make it more significant and accessible to the people of Israel.  

However, the most astonishing statement in today’s Gospel is not the fact that Jesus did not come to abolish the law, but the fact that he still allows those who lead others astray into his kingdom, even though they might be considered as the smallest there. Our interrogation would be: if those who break the Law are allowed into the kingdom, why bother respecting the Law? Two things could be considered from there: first we all break the law thus leading others to break it, secondly and consequently, we may not be worthy of the position we might allot to ourselves in the kingdom of God.

Role models shape our lives in many ways. When they are noted for commendable acts, we are proud of them and strive to follow their good example; when we are scandalised by their deeds, we are discouraged and we feel betrayed. Those of us who are very weak might suffer long-lasting sorrow. When we have felt let down by our models, it is sometimes difficult to forgive them. However, we often forget that, in one way or another, we all are role models to many others. Whichever our position we have in the society or in the church, there are many people who consider us as role models and expect us to be their guides in many ways.

Jesus says that “whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do so will be called least in the Kingdom of heaven.” This verse provides an answer to our first question: despite our imperfections, we still share in the inheritance of the kingdom. Nevertheless, we are called to humility: as it is clear that often, consciously or unconsciously, we mislead those who refer to us as role models. And as it makes us become the smallest in the Kingdom of God, we'd better humble ourselves and avoided to condemn others who go astray; we could find ourselves in the same “category “than them in the kingdom of God.

As we journey in our Lenten Season, let us pray for the gift of humility.

Tuesday of the Third Week of Lent - Priorities

Readings: Daniel 3:25-43, Psalm 25, Matthew 18:21-35.

It is easy to get confused in our Christian life. We are so close to the most Holy, to the most important thing in the world, that we sometimes kind of drift of and begin to believe that it is we who are the centre of the world. Each of us may start to think: I have now been Christian for a certain number of years, and so have I got a certain authority. I have become good at this. Or, as a Dominican brother, I might fall into the temptation of believing that I have a certain seniority over others. After all, haven’t I made some great sacrifices? Don’t I represent the very core of the Church? 

And as we grow bigger in our own eyes, it becomes more and more natural for us to think that we are - or should be - God’s first choice. As we get bigger in our own eyes, a certain blindness comes in, a blindness to all that is new. We become like the historian whom God brought back in time so that he could get to witness the very Creation. The historian lifted one eyebrow and said: ‘I think I have seen something similar before’. 

This perspective is neither the spirit of the Gospel nor the Spirit of God. ‘Look, I am doing something new, now it emerges; can you not see it?’ (Isaiah 43,19) asks the prophet, and mentions a new song that we should sing along with the whole of creation (Isaiah 42,10). 

 Those who really know this song are the children! Charles Peguy wrote a book called ‘The Mystery of the Holy Innocents’. In a passage, he begins to meditate on the child who has this extraordinary capacity of saying the same thing over and over again without getting tired. The child says ‘Good Morning’ and ‘Good night’ not once or twice; it can go on and on! ‘Good morning. Good night. Good morning. Good night. Good morning... ‘ And the 20th time is just as funny as the first. How can this be, asks Peguy. Well, that is because for the child, every time is like the first time. 

 This is the nature of the revelation in Christ. It is ever new, ever about to become real. We get to hear secrets that are being whispered into our ears, if we just bother to listen. The prophet says about those secrets: ‘they have just been created, not long ago, and until today you have heard nothing about them, so that you cannot say, 'Yes, I knew about this.' (Isaiah 48,7) To turn to Christ is to expect the unexpected, to let him cure our ‘stiffness’ and make us more flexible, and to lay aside our self-made layers of authority and our spiritual tiredness that make it so difficult to see the immensity of the Gospel. As we approach Christ in the Holy Communion, let us then pray with the words that we find in a chorale in Bach’s oratorio St John Passion: 

Jesus when we will not turn, 

Look on us in kindness: 

Make our hearts within us burn; 

Rouse us from our blindness.

Monday of the Third Week of Lent – Life after leprosy

Readings: 2 Kings 5:1-15ab.  Psalms 42:2, 3; 43:3,4.  Luke 4:24-30.

The irony is totally lost on these people of Nazareth in today's Gospel. Outraged by Jesus' teaching, they drive him out of the town and seek to hurl him over the cliff. Thus, they unintentionally bear witness that he is indeed a prophet.

And what is this prophetic teaching of Jesus that they found so offensive and uncomfortable? It is the idea that God not only cares about His people, Israel, but also loves the rest of humanity. Certainly, Israel is God's chosen people, according to an irrevocable covenant. But Jesus reveals the infinite love of the Father for all of humanity. Jew or Gentile, we all fall short of the glory of God and stand in need of His loving mercy. 'Athirst is my soul for the living God' (Ps. 42:3) – and God in His infinite goodness does not despise our needs.

This is not news to the people of Nazareth; their own Law and Prophets taught this. The Old Testament repeatedly says: never worship a foreign god, but always welcome the foreigner. The foreigner, as much as you, is made in the image of God.

We can draw a parallel here with the dictum, 'hate the sin, love the sinner'. The sinner (i.e. all of us) is nevertheless made in the image of God, an image which the sin mars and obscures. Human beings are not made for sin; we are made for life, life in all its fulness as children of God. So, to destroy the sin in us is not to destroy us but to save us. We are not our sins – we need to be saved from our sins.

Naaman the Syrian is a good example of this. His leprosy (which we can take as an image of sin, though it is not his fault) is not what Naaman was made for; it is a diminution of his humanity and not a necessary part of it. He was a valiant and successful army commander, we're told, and yet he had leprosy. I say, 'he had leprosy', rather than, 'he was a leper', to avoid identifying him with his disease. His leprosy was disposable, so that when he was cleansed he became more of a man, not less. He was restored to his full dignity as a human being.

It's the same with sin. If, like Naaman and his leprosy, we allow God to wash our sins away – and if, unlike the Nazarenes, we welcome Jesus into our lives – our hearts will become again like the heart of a little child, and we will be clean.

Third Sunday of Lent - The Anger of Jesus

Readings: Exodus 20: 1-17; Psalm 19; I Corinthians 1: 22-25; John 2: 13-25
Today’s gospel narrates a decisive event in the life of Jesus: by entering into the temple, and challenging the status quo, Jesus becomes a problem that the temple authorities can no long afford to ignore. By driving out the moneychangers and the traders, Jesus isn’t just challenging the authority of the temple leaders, he’s hitting them where it hurts – in the pocketbook – and during the potentially lucrative season of the Passover pilgrimage. So it seems that it is this incident - more than any other – which provokes the leaders of the Jewish people to conspire against Jesus, and it is the words which Christ speaks in today’s gospel which they place in evidence against him before the Sanhedrin (Mt 26:61).

For us, this account from the life of Jesus can be deeply challenging: the Jesus we see in today’s gospel doesn’t easily fit the image we often have of a man of peace, a man of prayer, and a man of wisdom. Anger is so often for us an occasion of sin, and yet here we see Christ – whom we acknowledge to be sinless – apparently flying into a rage. And what’s more there’s nothing inherently wrong about the work of a money-changer or of a trader: they exist for the benefit of the pious Jewish pilgrims, that they might make their temple offerings as required by Jewish law, without using Roman money which bore the idolatrous image of the Emperor. So what is it that provokes Jesus, and what justifies his anger?

In the Synoptic Gospels’ account of the temple incident, Jesus accuses the traders of turning His father’s house into a “den of robbers” (Mt 12:13). It seems that when money became involved, there quickly followed dishonesty, and the worship of God was corrupted by those seeking to make a quick buck. What’s worse is that this was taking place right next to the temple enclosure, in the Court of the Gentiles: not the holiest place in the temple, but nonetheless a place consecrated to the worship of the true God, to spiritual affairs, not to the affairs of the marketplace.

For St Thomas Aquinas, today’s gospel is evidence that it isn’t always a sin to be angry. Certainly, we often sin through anger, but it can also be a sin not to be angry (ST II-II, q158, a8). The anger of Jesus today is not the anger of a hurt pride that we might feel when we don’t get our own way, but anger at injustices being perpetrated against others. Anger can be the emotion that drives us to change the world for the better: as St Augustine says, “hope has two beautiful daughters: their names are courage and anger. Anger at the way things are, and courage to see that they do not remain the way they are”.

We would be quite inhuman if we did not feel anger when we see our brothers and sisters starving in Darfur, the scourge of violence terrorizing the Middle East, and the senseless killings in Syria. These crimes against human dignity are simply obviously wrong, and we are instinctively repelled. Whilst the actions of the moneychangers do not lead to loss of life, what Jesus sees with clarity is that their actions compromise the true dignity of humanity. We are created for communion with God – with the freedom to worship and practise religion – and by setting up an obstacle between man and God, and by cynically seeking to make a profit from the poor who seek only to worship God, the moneychangers are frustrating this divine gift, reducing worshipping man (homo adorans) into economic man (homo economicus), turning a freely given gift of God into a commodity to be bought and sold.

In their exchange with Jesus the temple leaders mistake the bricks and mortar of the temple building (hieron) with the interior temple of Christ’s body (naos). In this Lenten season we open ourselves to Christ’s purifying action within our bodies, which through Baptism have become temples of the Holy Spirit. Through prayer and penance we ask Christ to restore the fullness of our human dignity, to drive out the ways in which we so often corrupt it through sin, and to help us to recognise the true dignity of those around us, especially the poor, the sick and the suffering. We ask God to open our eyes, that we may see the truth about humanity created by God that we might delight in God and that He might delight in us, no matter how glorious and beautiful that truth may be.